Doves Press

The Doves Press was a private press based in Hammersmith, London. During nearly seventeen years of operation, the Doves Press produced notable examples of twentieth century typography. A distinguishing feature of its books was a specially-devised font, known variously as the Doves Roman, the Doves Press Fount of Type, or simply the Doves type.

The press, at No. 1, Hammersmith Terrace, was named after The Dove, an old riverside pub nearby. The Doves Press was responsible for the Doves Bible (5 vols, 1902–1904), which is considered to be one of the best examples of its kind.[3]

By 1909 Cobden-Sanderson and Walker were in a protracted and bitter dispute involving the rights to the Doves Type in the dissolution of their partnership. As part of the partnership dissolution agreement, all rights to the Doves Type were to pass to Walker upon the death of Cobden-Sanderson. Instead of letting this happen, the matrices were destroyed by Cobden-Sanderson on Good Friday, 21 March 1913 by casting them into the Thames river off Hammersmith Bridge in London, a short walk from the Press. As further recorded in his Journals, he began the destruction of the types beginning 31 August 1916 at midnight, when "it seemed a suitable night, and time".[7] He is said to have completed the task in January 1917, after 170 trips to the river,[8] though his Journals do not mention the culmination.

The first digital revival of the Doves Type was made in 1994 by Swedish designer Torbjörn Olsson who added a new italic, and whose fonts reproduce the soft corners and imperfections of the printed characters.[9] In 2013, the designer Robert Green began to create a more polished digital version of the Doves type.[10] In 2015, after searching the riverbed of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge with help from the Port of London Authority, Green managed to recover 150 pieces of the original type, which helped him to refine the font.[11][12] The re-created Doves Type is distributed by Typespec.

^Naylor, Gillian: "The things that might be: British design after Morris". In Diane Waggoner, ed.: The beauty of life: William Morris & the art of design. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003, ISBN0-500-28434-2, p. 122-124